


heartlines

by pyrophane



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Dreams, Light Pining, M/M, Multi, Strangers to Lovers, Tarot, Temporary Character Death, Vaguely Non-Linear, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-01-16 09:59:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18519121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrophane/pseuds/pyrophane
Summary: What are you waiting for?says the crow, in Junhui’s light voice.The most powerful kinds of magic require three people to execute.





	heartlines

**Author's Note:**

> written for here - years & years. all my love to the mods for bringing this together <3
> 
> some extra content warnings i didn't think were present enough to merit tagging: non-graphic animal injury, non-explicit sex with elements of voyeurism.
> 
> title refers to the palm feature said to foretell your love life, though palmistry is not actually one of the many types of magic mentioned within this fic. see end notes for a quick rundown of all the tarot cards not explained within the fic!
> 
> i hope you enjoy!!
> 
> optional listening: [the future is mine](https://open.spotify.com/user/leonhardts/playlist/3qRtbPfbNRMRerFbLLvvAU?si=mvMVx7-ATrqo2GrrShiBKA)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were everywhere at once. And each thing now stood once again  
for every other thing: but bursting at the seams, awash with light.  
If your hair was light, if the night was peppered with light,  
there were no surprises left except that light, that everything  
including light, came cloaked now in its self-astonishment.

— _Totem Poem,_ Luke Davies

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joshua crumples to the ground like his strings have been snapped. A million arrowheads of light piercing him through for an immeasurably long moment and Seungcheol watches the arch of his body buoyed up seconds before the collapse as if in slow motion, the line of his throat gilded. All of it flashing out of order, displaced from time, fall and rise, and then Junhui dashes forward to catch Joshua before he hits the ground and everything wrenches itself back into place, Junhui the drawstring pulling the universe together. 

Two steps behind, Seungcheol jerks forward too, kneels, fumbles for Joshua’s wrist, thumb pressing into the divot between bones. Nothing. He punches a bolt of energy into him through the skin, defibrillator-style, pushing down hard enough to leave red marks, but still: nothing, silence, stillness.

Through his second vision Seungcheol can see Junhui pouring energy into Joshua, but it’s like trying to fill a leaking bucket, the magic sloshing around, draining right out of him. Futile even in the face of Junhui’s law-of-nature stubbornness when he sets his mind to anything. Desperation bubbles up, high-water mark. He can’t let go of Joshua’s hand. So much magic pushing against the inside of his fingertips and Joshua unmoving, the magic burnt clean out of him like faulty wiring. 

The water from the spring in the middle of the clearing trickles past Seungcheol’s feet. “Junnie,” he says. Junhui looks up, eyes wide and wild. The flow of magic unstaunched. Seungcheol swallows. “Can you hold the wards?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
  
Summer days drag out like honey and Seungcheol spends them aimless, restless, the promised lethargy out of his grasp. When Jihoon comes online they tag duel on YGOPRO, but Jihoon’s busy with coven business more often than not and Seungcheol, unemployed and unattached to any coven, has little luck in finding other ways to fill the gap between waking up and going back to sleep.

He didn’t have a coven during high school either, but he did have Jeonghan, then. Ever since he moved away after graduation Jeonghan hasn’t come back to visit, even during the summer break. That isn’t to say he’s exited Seungcheol’s life. Really it’s the opposite. But Jeonghan can’t just video call him like a regular person—no, he has to invade Seungcheol’s dreams.

Seungcheol is in the middle of a perfectly nice dream about buying fifteen new pairs of tracksuit pants at staggeringly discounted sales prices when the world lurches into strange focus and suddenly he’s clutching the sides of a mine cart rattling down the world’s flimsiest-looking rollercoaster track. If you die in a dream do you die in real life? Seungcheol has no intentions of finding out.

“Get up, get up,” Jeonghan declares, jumping up from the mine cart in front of him and stepping gracefully into Seungcheol’s like it’s no more taxing than moving off an escalator. The cart he’s just vacated wobbles and tips right off the track, plunging down to somewhere Seungcheol would rather not see. “It’s the end of the world!”

“I’m asleep right now,” Seungcheol protests. “If I get up you can’t talk to me—wait, okay, so I’m gonna wake up now—”

“You’re staying right here and listening to me,” Jeonghan says. “So there’s a ley line artery exploding near you—”

“It’s one ley line, how bad can it be,” Seungcheol grumbles. The rollercoaster swoops down, leaving what feels like half his internal organs behind in the air.

“It’s multiple ley lines crossing over, keep up,” Jeonghan says. “Energies mixing, it’s a bad time all around. As in, apocalyptically bad. Now, I like the world because I’m in it, so that means you’re going to have to do something about it.”

“ _Me?_ Why?! If it’s so important why don’t you do it yourself?”

“Legally I’m not allowed,” Jeonghan says smugly, and also entirely unconvincingly. The rollercoaster clatters up towards a crest.

Seungcheol groans. “Great,” he says, already resigning himself to a dismal afternoon tramping around in a forest until Jeonghan gets his fill of seeing him embarrass himself. “Since when did you even care about the law. Don’t you have anyone else you can ask? Like, someone who actually has, you know, _magic_?”

“You have magic,” Jeonghan snaps, and there it is again, that unbearable faith Seungcheol’s half-convinced Jeonghan only maintains to make Seungcheol’s life as difficult as possible. Certainly it’s incongruous with Jeonghan’s general life policy of doing whatever leads to the greatest possible comfort. When they were younger it’d been flattering; now Seungcheol mostly just wishes Jeonghan would give up already, though some part of him is still fiercely glad to be the exception to Jeonghan’s rule. Then the rollercoaster plunges down again and Seungcheol takes back every nice thing he’s ever said or thought about his so-called best friend.

“Please can you switch this dream to something else,” Seungcheol grits out.

“No, I think this one is fun,” Jeonghan says brightly. “As I was saying, it’s not a one-person fix. So I have this ‘friend.’”

That is not what Jeonghan had been saying at all, but the thing about being friends with Jeonghan is that you really have to pick your battles. “... I heard the scare quotes, why were there scare quotes.”

“His name is Joshua Hong and he's American,” Jeonghan continues, ignoring Seungcheol. “I’m sending him to you, he should get there sometime in the next couple of days, so don’t panic when an extremely beautiful boy shows up on your doorstep, okay? He’s important to me.”

Seungcheol squints at Jeonghan. “Are you trying to set me up,” he says.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Jeonghan says. “Anyway, it’s full moon tomorrow night, you know what that means.”

“I... don’t?”

“Two weeks until new moon,” Jeonghan says. “Magic for beginnings. That’s when you want to be there.”

“Two weeks? Didn’t you say the world was ending like, imminently?”

“Maybe it hasn’t happened yet,” Jeonghan says airily. “Time flows differently around here. And one more thing… the ley line could kill you. But it could also kickstart your magic! I’d say… fifty-fifty either way.”

If Seungcheol wasn’t clinging onto the cart for dear life he would make Jeonghan the first test subject for his dying-in-a-dream-equals-dying-in-real-life hypothesis. “So you’re sending me on a mission where I have a fifty percent chance of _dying_ and _becoming dead_ —”

“I lied,” Jeonghan says. “It doesn’t have to be you. It’s still your choice, in the end.” His voice sharpens, taking on an odd edge of urgency. “Do you understand? It’s your choice. You can turn Shua away or you can go with him, it’s up to you.”

“Alright, yeah, it’s my choice, I get it, whatever,” Seungcheol mutters. “Happy?”

“Yes,” Jeonghan says. “Oh, wow, is that a waterfall?”

“What waterfall?” Seungcheol says, but between one word and the next, Jeonghan’s vanished. “Jeonghan, come back, what—”

He hadn’t been able to hear the roaring over the clamour of his heartbeat earlier but the track is speeding towards a vertical drop positioned right over the middle of a churning waterfall. Who designed this rollercoaster? Surely it’s a violation of at least fifty health and safety laws. The cart shows no signs of slowing as it approaches the brink. Panic punches through him so forcefully he jerks awake, sweating and shivering and full of homicidal intent. Already the details of the dream are dissolving around the edges, so he grabs the journal on his bedside table and scribbles down a few keywords before flopping down onto his stomach and doing his best to find his way back to sleep, this time undisturbed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An extremely beautiful boy is on Seungcheol’s doorstep. Seungcheol, who woke up about ten minutes ago, hasn’t seen the sun in maybe two days, stands on the other side of the threshhold trying to kick his brain into gear.

“I’m Joshua Hong,” the boy says, after a period of staring just starting to verge on awkward. “Jeonghan sent me?”

“Oh,” Seungcheol says, finally emerging fully from the cocoon of leftover sleep. “Oh, yeah, um—come in, sorry about the mess—”

If Seungcheol thought Jeonghan was rounding up his magically uninclined friends for some kind of triumphant solidarity roadtrip he would have been wrong. Joshua, apparently, has the opposite problem: too much magic, the energy under his skin lying too close to the surface and sparking out of him in uneven bursts, short-circuiting itself. “I’m actually dying,” he says breezily, seated at the kitchen bench. “Did you know too much magic can kill you? I didn’t either. The ley line or whatever is gonna get me if I don’t get it first.”

Seungcheol is going to kill Jeonghan for not telling him this specific part in advance so he could prepare and not look like an insensitive idiot. “Um!” he exclaims, floundering for something appropriate. “I’m so sorry…”

“It’s fine,” Joshua says, waving him off. “Death isn’t a permanent condition anyway.”

“The—” The rest of Seungcheol’s fumbling condolences evaporate on the tip of his tongue. “What?”

“Like, the thirteenth card of the Major Arcana,” Joshua says. “Death stands for transformation. Also if I don’t die then I’m not dead, it’s that easy.”

“If you don’t… okay,” Seungcheol says slowly. He isn’t sure what tarot has to do with this but he also doesn’t know enough about tarot to argue otherwise with a plausible chance of success. Not that he was planning to argue with a _dying_ —or not? Joshua’s expression is impossible to read—man in the first place. And then Joshua’s face splits into a smile, the force of it crinkling up his eyes. For a moment Seungcheol’s heart stutters, involuntary, cardiac arrest in isolated miniature.

“Relax,” Joshua drawls. “We’re going to get the ley line. The rest of it doesn’t matter.”

 _Your choice,_ Jeonghan said, in the dream. But something about how forthright Joshua’s gaze, even tempered as it is by the smiling lightness, demands reciprocation. And growing up surrounded by mundane, unthinking displays of magic without being able to touch it himself hadn’t exactly _not_ instilled a crushing inferiority complex in him. His mother sending a cool breeze across the room to tug the curtains open, Jihoon lighting candles with the flick of a finger, Jeonghan binding dreams together like tying off threads, and what did Seungcheol have to show for it? Only the countless hours before falling asleep he used to spend with his eyes shut willing things to move, the alarm clock, a belt, the amethyst on the windowsill, but they never shifted an inch.

“Alright,” Seungcheol says, with finality. “Do you know where we’re going?”

“Sure,” Joshua says. “We have to take the subway.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This time the scene of the dream is an overpass above a bustling highway, cement edged with metal grating. Jeonghan’s seated to one side of the path, watching the cars hurtle by below.

“Hey, Yoon Jeonghan,” Seungcheol says, knocking his ankle against Jeonghan’s knee as he sits down. “Get a job. Contribute to the economy. Be a productive member of society.”

“I _have_ a job,” Jeonghan says. “I work in the family business, I told you already.”

“Then why do you always have so much free time?” Seungcheol says suspiciously. “It’s the middle of the day and you’re intruding in my dreams?”

“Why are _you_ asleep in the middle of the day, hmm? Maybe _you_ should get a job.”

“I am literally on the job that you gave me—stop trying to bait me! It’s not going to work!”

Jeonghan laughs, leaning back against the railing. He fishes a tarot deck out of a pocket too small to house cards of that size. “Hey, you want me to do a reading for you?”

“Isn’t divination going out of trend? I’m pretty sure that’s what Mingyu said last time we met up.”

“Divination will never go out of trend,” Jeonghan says. “Everyone wants to know the future.”

“What a scam,” Seungcheol mutters.

“Probably,” Jeonghan agrees. He fans the cards out in his hands, holds them out to Seungcheol.

Seungcheol draws. “ _The Moon_ ,” he reads aloud. “What does that mean?”

“Upright it means intuition. Illusions. Everything that was buried coming back up to the surface.”

“But it’s upside down,” Seungcheol says. “That’s… not good, is it.”

“Repression and release,” Jeonghan says. “Unconscious level shit. Like when a Magic 8-ball gives you ‘Question Unclear, Try Again,’ you know?”

“Wait, those are real?”

“Sure they’re real,” Jeonghan says. “You can read signs from anything. I could throw rice grains on the floor and call that augury. The channel doesn’t matter, it’s the magic behind it that does.”

Seungcheol splays a palm against the floor, feels the rumble of cars passing underneath echoing up the supports. “Why did you send Joshua to me?” he says. “We have basically nothing in common.”

“I like it when my favourite people know each other,” Jeonghan says.

“I don’t,” Seungcheol mumbles.

“You’re nearly at your stop,” Jeonghan says. “Shua’s about to wake you up, so here’s your chance to get there first.”

Consciousness returns in stages. By the time he registers that the fabric his cheek is pillowed on is attached to a shoulder attached to Joshua himself his breathing’s already sped up and the light is making insistent patterns on the insides of his eyelids and there’s no way to continue plausibly feigning sleep.

“Sorry,” Seungcheol mumbles, pulling back so fast his head swims. He leans against the wall of the compartment on his other side, steadying himself.

“It’s fine,” Joshua says. “Jeonghan dream?”

Seungcheol huffs. “Yeah,” he says, meeting Joshua’s eyes again. “The one and only.”

“Constant of life, am I right,” Joshua says. A grudging fondness curling around the edges of the exasperation. Not for the first time Seungcheol wonders what the story is there, but contrary to popular belief he does have the ability to sense when not to press. “Death, taxes, and Yoon Jeonghan.”

“I’ll tell him you said that.”

“No need, I’ll do it myself.” Joshua says everything like it’s halfway to a joke and Seungcheol has no way to parse the tone of this conversation. So he just nods, and then the train pulls into the station, effectively cutting them off anyway.

After disembarking Joshua says something about needing to use the bathroom and darts off into the crush of people, stranding Seungcheol by the ticket barrier. He pretends to inspect a bouquet in the display of the neighbouring florist stand for the sake of looking occupied, and then figures he might as well look for real. In high school Mingyu dabbled briefly in floromancy in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to impress one of their classmates but the knowledge stuck: lily of the valley, for a return to happiness.

“Excuse me.” Someone taps him on the shoulder, and Seungcheol turns around. It’s a boy, tall, dark-haired, wide-eyed. Extremely beautiful, though not on his doorstep. “Are you Choi Seungcheol?”

Seungcheol is pretty certain he’s never seen him before, because he has the kind of face anyone would remember. “Yes?” he says, wincing when it comes out as if he’s unsure of his own identity. “Yes, that’s me.”

“Hi!” the boy says. “I'm Wen Junhui. I’ve been looking for you.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the initial _you-know-Jeonghan-oh-I-know-Jeonghan_ introductory spiel Joshua and Junhui take to each other right away. First Seungcheol is annoyed because he knew Joshua first, and then he’s annoyed because he was the one Junhui came up to first, and then he’s annoyed at himself for being annoyed when he barely knows either of them so in the end he just sits there at the cafe table seething pathetically while Junhui douses his dumplings in chili oil and chatters on about his favourite brand, Joshua nodding along. Seungcheol can’t relate, because he has the spice tolerance of a baby.  

“How do you even know Jeonghan?” Seungcheol says.

“I met him in a dream,” Junhui says. “He was really nice! Said he actually existed. I haven’t met him in real life yet but I’m sure I will eventually. Anyway, he told me to find you, something about a ley line… you’re trying to activate your magic and Shua-hyung is trying to deactivate his, right?” He grins. “We’re like... the three bears from Goldilocks.”

It brings a smile to Seungcheol’s face too. “And you’re the one who’s just right?”

“I know things sometimes,” Junhui says, shrugging. “They’re not always useful. But they are there!”

“Nice,” Joshua says. He nods sagely. “Always good to know things.”

As it turns out, the artery is located much closer than Seungcheol had expected. The edge of the forest looms just a short walk away from the station, sentries holding the city at bay. Somewhere in the heart of the forest there’s a pressure cooker of magic coming to the boil with apparently apocalyptic consequences if left unattended.

“Well,” Seungcheol says, craning his neck to look up. “We can’t do anything until new moon, right?”

“Nope,” Joshua says.

“We didn’t really think this through, did we,” Seungcheol says. “So we have to hang around for at least another week.”

“Yep,” Joshua says.

“Don’t worry,” Junhui says. “I know a place.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
  
The place turns out to be a remarkably well-kept cottage right at the fringes of the forest that Junhui opens by pressing his palm to the centre of the door. Silver spirals through the grain around his handprint and the wood splits down the middle, smoothly swinging inwards to allow them entry.

“I have an old friend,” Junhui says, by way of explanation. “He has a bunch of safehouses like this all over the country, just in case.”

“In case of what?” Seungcheol asks.

“I don’t know,” Junhui says, beaming. “I don’t think he does either! He’s just a terminal worrier.”

A very generous friend, to furnish multiple properties as some kind of emergency contingency plan in what Seungcheol’s pretty sure is a move entirely for Junhui’s benefit. Seungcheol’s only known Junhui for a day but already he can understand the impulse behind it.

Inside, the living room is occupied by two deflating chintz armchairs and a gleaming Steinway Joshua pronounces _definitely cursed_ on sight, and while Seungcheol’s ninety percent sure Joshua is just fucking with him again, he isn’t willing to risk that last ten percent, so he steers clear anyway. And, mystifyingly, a set of tarot cards on the kitchen bench, accompanied by a long clear rod of what Seungcheol vaguely recognises as selenite.

Joshua sinks into one of the armchairs, _actually_ sinks, the seat dipping a good ten centimetres under him. Seungcheol suppresses a snicker at the expression on Joshua’s face when the cushioning gives way.

Junhui picks up the tarot cards and pulls the piano stool up to the coffee table, taking a seat. Deciding not to risk the other armchair, Seungcheol drags in one of the sturdier-looking chairs from the kitchen.

“You do tarot?” Seungcheol asks.

Junhui hums, shuffling the deck in his hands. “Not really,” he says. “I’ve just picked up a couple of things, that’s all.”

He offers the deck to Joshua, who shakes his head. “Do Seungcheol first,” Joshua says.

Obligingly, Seungcheol takes the deck and cuts it. Junhui lays out three cards in a row on the table, face down. Jeonghan, who has an overdeveloped taste for theatrics, does this too when he conducts readings, says it heightens the tension; maybe it appeals to Junhui’s sense of the ridiculous.

He flips over the leftmost card first. “ _The Moon_ ,” Junhui says. Seungcheol’s jaw snaps shut so hard his teeth make an audible clacking noise. “Card of the subconscious… reversed, though, so—”

Repression, release. “Yeah, I know,” Seungcheol says. “Do the next one.”

The next card shows a blindfolded woman tied in a field of swords. “ _Eight of Swords_ ,” Junhui says. “Limitations and self sabotage… you need to stop overthinking and trust your intuition? That’s what the first card said too, something like that.”

“And the last?”

Junhui hesitates. He doesn’t turn the last card over. “ _Nine of Swords_ ,” he says. “Fear.”

Joshua makes a twisting motion with his fingers, and a sudden sharp burst of wind sends the card flying up into the air, before it floats back down slow as a feather into place, right side up. The woman with her head buried in her hands reveals itself, _IX_ , the swords lined up in a column on the wall behind her.

“... Well,” Seungcheol says. “That’s… optimistic.”

“Fucked up, is what it is,” Joshua says.

Junhui nods twice, emphatic, before passing the deck to Joshua. “I’m gonna go look if there’s anything in the kitchen, I’m hungry,” he announces, standing up. “Do you want anything?”

“Nah, I’m good,” Joshua says. “Tell us what’s in there, though?”

“I’m fine too,” Seungcheol says politely. Junhui nods again and disappears into the kitchen. Joshua sets the deck down on the table, then picks it back up.

In the interests of staving off an approaching uncomfortable silence, Seungcheol asks, “Do you do tarot too?”

“No,” Joshua says. But he’s cutting the deck with swift, absent-minded movements that speak to familiarity. He lifts a corner of the topmost card, grimaces, and continues shuffling.

Seungcheol narrows his eyes. “Are you allowed to do that? Put a card back if you don’t like it?”

“Why not?” Joshua says. “I’m not gonna let a piece of cardboard tell me what to do. Sometimes your deck says things, and sometimes you don’t want to listen.”

“Then why’d you do the reading in the first place? And it doesn’t change the fact that you drew it,” Seungcheol insists.

“Well, no,” Joshua says. He sets the deck down again. “But there’s nothing wrong with delaying the inevitable. If it’s happening then it’s happening.” His voice goes remote. “Sometimes it’s just nice to hold it off a little longer.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Seungcheol wakes up the next morning it’s to the sound of someone playing the piano, a melody that prickles at his memory, like he’d maybe heard it in a dream once, filtered through sedimentary layers of recollection and white noise. He makes his way to the living room, where Junhui is seated at the piano, fingers gliding over the keys.

The piece ends, Junhui’s hands coming to a rest. The hems of his sleeves falling away to reveal the delicate bones of his wrists. “I thought the piano was cursed,” Seungcheol says, cutting a glance sideways at Joshua, who suddenly becomes absorbed in the mug he’s holding like it contains the key to unlocking some cosmic secret of existence.

“Seems fine to me?” Junhui offers. He presses a single key, middle C. “I can’t feel anything…”

“Don’t disturb me,” Joshua says, without glancing up from his mug, before Seungcheol can open his mouth again. “I’m reading the tea leaves.”

Seungcheol looks at the jar of instant coffee on the counter, then at Joshua.

“I’m pioneering the art of reading coffee grounds like tea leaves, it’s a new field of divination,” Joshua says primly.

Coexistence falls into place like a key slotting into a slightly rusted lock. It turns out that none of them had actually thought to pack for an extended trip but there’s magic rooted right into the house’s foundations that responds to Junhui and more tentatively to Joshua and not at all to Seungcheol, which he’d expected but still takes offense at. Either way it’s not like it really matters; the train station and by extension human civilisation including the convenience store is only a brief walk away.

The boundaries become apparent very rapidly. Junhui and Joshua gravitate together because what they have in common with each other as well as with Jeonghan is a shared love of devilry, especially in the ways it can be inflicted upon Seungcheol, but Junhui is the more expressive one, hangs off Seungcheol’s shoulders, ear coming into dangerous proximity with Seungcheol’s accelerating pulse. In the evenings they play cards, normal cards, though Joshua says that tarot decks can be used for card games too. Seungcheol admits it, he has a terrible poker face, but he’s never lost quite so badly before, to the tune of Junhui’s gleeful cackle as he sweeps the table again, but maybe that’s his fault for playing against someone whose magic involves omniscience roulette.

Softened by shots of discounted 7-Eleven soju Seungcheol clings tearfully to Joshua’s arm while Joshua laughs and tolerates the contact and Junhui watches them both over the top of his hand of cards. If he knows anything he doesn’t say it. The nights wheel on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“What is it?” Seungcheol says, working a knuckle into his eye to rub the grit of sleep away.

Junhui glances up. Shifts to the side so Seungcheol can see what was hidden by his body—it’s a crow, lying prone on the ground, wing set at an unnatural angle. For a moment Seungcheol thinks it’s dead, before the line of his sight catches on the rapid trembling rise and fall of its chest. “It’s hurt,” Junhui says, anxious. “Right wing, right leg, I asked, but it’s so scared and in so much pain I don’t know what to do, I never learned any healing magic…”

“Are you sure you should be—what if it has, like, rabies, or…”

Coming out of the house, Joshua brushes past Seungcheol, crouching down beside Junhui. He passes a critical eye over the little body. Swirls his index finger over it, counterclockwise, three times.

Thin spires of water rising up from the ground like vines wrap around the bird, sheening over dark and sinking in. Little by little the feathers shift back into place, the leg straightening out, like the damage is rewinding itself. Seungcheol holds his breath as the crow stirs, hops to its feet. Junhui holds out a hand, palm up, and it jumps on, pecks lightly at his wrist as he lifts it to eye level. It’s as if some kind of understanding passes between them. Then it takes off in a flurry of wings, disappearing into the treeline.

“Ungrateful,” Joshua jokes. There’s a few stray water droplets still orbiting his fingertips, glittering silver and white in the sunlight.

“Wild things always are,” Junhui says.

“Bite the hand that heals you,” Joshua replies. But he doesn’t look sad, even mockingly so. Only thoughtful, staring out at the place where the crow vanished into the trees. “Kind of wish it did, actually.”

Seungcheol frowns. “Why?”

He’s expecting another semi-insincere brushoff of an answer but instead Joshua tips his head up, squinting when the motion makes the light fall into his eyes. “It’s almost like… reciprocation? Or, like, acknowledgement, at least.”

Junhui hums. Overhead the sun crawls higher in the cloudless sky. It’s going to be a scorcher of a day, Seungcheol can feel it already. Right now, though, it’s early enough that the warmth is still bearable. Just right. Somewhere in the distance a crow is cawing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On his way to bed Seungcheol’s eye catches on a shadow of a figure stretching out from the back of the house. Terror seizes him for a second before he remembers the house wouldn’t let an intruder in, so after his heart calms down he goes to investigate. It’s Joshua. He’d called an early night, claiming a headache. But here he is standing at the back door facing the window that looks out onto the forest, so still he could pass as part of the house itself.

Maybe he’s sleepwalking. Seungcheol can’t remember what you’re supposed to do with a sleepwalker, wake them up or let them be. He reaches out, fingers brushing Joshua’s shoulderblade and without warning Joshua turns and slams him against the wall by the throat. His eyes are flat and silver as coins in the half-light. Once the shock subsides, seconds, Seungcheol wrenches his breathing back under control, trying to slow the furious breakneck hammer of his pulse under Joshua’s fingers.

“Joshua,” Seungcheol says, low and even. “Joshua, it’s just me.”

He waits. The seconds tick over. In increments, the eerie silvery light leaches out of Joshua’s eyes, and then Joshua jerks away from Seungcheol like he’s been stung, all the pressure on his throat lifted in an instant. Seungcheol coughs, curling forward to suck in a breath.

“I’m sorry,” Joshua blurts out. “Are you okay? I didn’t—are you hurt?”

“I’m fine!” Seungcheol says. “It’s fine, I shouldn’t have touched you—”

The expression on Joshua’s face is _fear._ Seungcheol hadn’t thought he was capable of it.

“It’s the closeness, it’s like an allergic reaction or something,” Joshua says. Laughs, a shade too tight to be believable. “The ley line artery isn’t mixing well with my magic, I guess.”

“Why don’t you like me?” Seungcheol blurts out, then snaps his mouth shut, wishing he could snatch the words back from the air.

Joshua blinks, slow shutter of eyelashes. “I don’t? I mean, I… don’t not like you?”

“Oh,” Seungcheol says. “Never mind, then—”

“It’s just like, you know. You’re Jeonghan’s best friend and I’m Jeonghan’s best friend, how could we ever know peace.”

“Does that make us rivals?”

The corners of Joshua’s mouth twist upwards. “Is that what you want?”

“No,” Seungcheol says. “Maybe? What are the options here?”

“Rivals,” Joshua says, counting off on his fingers. “People who care about the same person. Or people? Housemates. Not-strangers. Uh… friends. Right, yeah, forgot that was a thing.”

“Let’s try for that, then,” Seungcheol says, laughing. “Friends.” The word tastes smooth and bitter like cold coffee.

“You’re really persistent, you know that?” Joshua says. “Not this, I mean in general.”

“Huh? Is that a good thing?”

“Sure,” Joshua says. “I’m jealous.” He doesn’t sound it, though, opaque again, and Seungcheol resigns himself to maybe never knowing what goes on inside Joshua’s head.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Long, slow heat of a late summer afternoon. The sky is the colour of an old bruise, light filtering slow like molasses through the crisscrossing branches. Seungcheol yawns, drowsiness setting in, rhythmic thrum of cicadas as backdrop. He’s leaning against a post. Junhui sits nearby, face upturned to soak up the dregs of the sun, close enough that Seungcheol could probably close the distance with his arm if he leaned forward, if he wanted to.

Joshua steps out onto the deck, holding a chilled can of green tea. Taking a seat, he presses it briefly to the back of Junhui’s neck and Junhui flinches at the cold, twisting away and swiping the can from Joshua’s grip and swatting him lightly on the shoulder with his other hand in retaliation as Joshua laughs and heads back inside. Junhui pops the tab, offers the can to Seungcheol, and Seungcheol takes a grateful swig before passing it back to Junhui.

“Hey,” Seungcheol calls. “Why are we sitting so far apart?”

“No reason,” Junhui says. He slides across the wood, heedless of splinters, and drapes a curious arm around Seungcheol’s shoulder, setting the can down. Seungcheol reciprocates immediately.

Contact is easy. The sun sinks down behind the tops of the trees, lighting them up in gold. It’s like being struck by lightning, the way Seungcheol realises he’ll probably remember this moment for the rest of his life. Sun melted and spread out over the crown of the forest. Junhui’s weight against his side. Warmth heavy in the air.

“What’s the weirdest non-Jeonghan dream you’ve ever had?” Seungcheol says.

Junhui mulls it over. “I used to have this one dream about my teeth falling out,” he says thoughtfully. “I’d run my tongue over them and they’d peel off like corn kernels and I’d accidentally swallow them. The teeth always just felt like half-melted ice, all smooth and everything… it was pretty freaky.”

“Holy shit.”

“I know right? I searched it up, apparently it means I’m scared of saying something. But that’s so… I don’t know, it made me nearly angry when I read that, because it was so obvious. And I don’t really think there’s anything I’m not saying.”

“Maybe you just don’t know it yet.”

“And what are _you_ waiting for?”

“What makes you think I’m waiting for anything?”

“I know things, remember?” Junhui says. “Actually that’s not why. You just look like it.”

“That’s my face,” Seungcheol says.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Junhui says. “I don’t think you knew, anyway. That’s okay, we can’t all be me.” He sparkles.

“You’re right,” Seungcheol says, “you’re the only one,” and Junhui reddens, dropping his head onto Seungcheol’s shoulder, shy again upon validation.

Too late he thinks he probably could have kissed Junhui earlier, before he asked, but the moment’s passed, now, the timer reset. Until the sun completely disappears, neither of them move.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Shouldn’t it be an irreversible process or whatever,” Joshua is saying. “Total entropy increases.”

“Okay, but I’m a Gemini,” Junhui replies. “And it’s Leo season. So.”

Seungcheol has no earthly idea how these two statements are supposed to relate to each other and says as much when he sits down on one of the armchairs Joshua resuscitated in the first few days.

Joshua smiles, close-mouthed. “We’re debating hypotheticals,” he says, which is utterly unhelpful and Seungcheol’s sure he knows it.

“In that case,” Seungcheol says, “does anyone actually know what we’re supposed to do with the ley line… artery… whatever?”

“We have three people,” Junhui says, with such cheery certainty Seungcheol doesn’t have the heart to point out that actually only two of them are witches. “It’ll work out!”

“What,” Seungcheol says, “like a coven?”

“Don’t you ever wonder why it’s three,” Joshua muses.

Three is ideal, though four works nearly as well, particularly for elemental magic. Seven is the next sweet spot for coven size, and from there upwards magic clusters in multiples: eight, nine, twelve, and so on, though it’s rare to find covens any larger than that. Having the right numbers on a purely mathematical basis doesn’t mean the magic will balance itself; the human aspect is just as inextricable. Witches tend to forget that.

“Three makes a plane,” Junhui says. “Everything in the universe likes balance, returning to equilibrium states, all that. That’s why the magic seeks threes out. The shape fits. It’s the path of least resistance. I had a friend who told me that.”

Joshua leans forward, propping his chin on a hand. “Yeah? Have you ever been in a coven before?”

“Twice, in high school,” Junhui says. “One of three and then one of four. It was fun…”

“But it didn’t last,” Seungcheol says, the question mark hesitant, half-formed.

“No,” Junhui says. “We’re still friends, though, it just—didn’t balance properly.”

Joshua sits up. “I don’t think it’s really about balance,” he says. “Why I can’t… like, when I was a kid there was this falcon… it doesn’t matter, it’s just—you shouldn’t take it as a given. Reciprocation, or whatever.”

“What do you mean?” Seungcheol says.

“The universe doesn’t owe you anything,” Joshua says. “Not even what you give. You could give and give and never get a single thing back and that’s just how it is.”

“Then what’s stopping you?” Junhui asks, softly. “If you aren’t owed anything, then you can do anything you want.”

“ _I’ve_ got debts,” Joshua says.

“So let them go,” Junhui says. Solemn, almost uncharacteristically so. Like there’s something darker and greater behind the words. “Why should you owe anything either?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The walls in the cottage are plywood and plaster and consequently have very little soundproofing quality. Seungcheol discovered this early last week when Joshua informed him that he could hear Seungcheol talking in his sleep all the way from the living room couch and Junhui chipped in with an off-the-cuff breakdown of the building’s construction materials. All members of this household are aware of this, so it makes no sense for Seungcheol to be hearing what he is hearing now.

He’d gone to get a glass of water from the kitchen when he passed Junhui’s room and realised Junhui had _company_. He should outrun the secondhand embarrassment, go back to his room and pretend he didn’t hear a sound. But it’s like every function of his body has shut off, rerouted to kick his heartbeat into overdrive, and all he can do is stand there dumbly, face burning.

“Shh,” Joshua is saying, “shh, do you want him to hear us—”

Junhui makes a breathy, choked-off noise like the air has been punched out of his lungs. Seungcheol imagines Joshua fitting their mouths together to swallow the sound, or maybe it’s his hand sealed over Junhui’s lips. He regains just enough motor ability to sink to the ground by the wall, squeeze his eyes shut, shove his hand into his mouth, bite down on the meat of his palm. Want is a white-hot knife in his gut. Open wound ache.

With all the clarity of a portent he can see the faultless arch of Junhui’s back, Joshua’s hands braced on his hips, the image assembling itself on the backs of his eyelids in concert with the noises. He’s so flushed with heat he’s shivering. Taut all the way down. Inside Junhui’s room someone sighs, long and pleased, and Seungcheol bites down harder on his hand, barely feels it. The knife twists. He tilts his head down, breathes through his nose, shallow. Works his free hand into the front of his sweatpants.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not surprisingly Jeonghan is the last person Seungcheol wants to see after he’s just gotten off to the thought of the two people he’s currently sharing space with, together. “Really not in the mood,” he says, as the too-bright dream coalesces around him.

What he wants to do is freak out, mope around feeling sorry for himself once he’s tired himself out, and then spend the rest of his life trying to atone for accidentally making exhibitionists out of Junhui and Joshua. Momentary indiscretion and now he can never look either of them in the eye again. Sometimes it takes a lot to realise how much you care about people, such as listening to them fuck and wishing you were there too.

“And why not,” Jeonghan says. They’re sitting at a picnic table in a park today, populated by non-player characters, all of whom look suspiciously similar to Seungcheol’s first crush from back in middle school, Im Nayoung.

Seungcheol is not doing this. “I am not doing this,” he says.

“What happened? Which one of them did you kiss?”

“What? I—neither of them! There was no kissing! There will be no kissing!” At least, none involving _him._  

Jeonghan raises an eyebrow. “You know what you sound like? You sound like you have a crush—”

“Shut up!”

“—ing need for a reading.” Jeonghan brandishes a tarot deck at him.

“Why is everyone so obsessed with tarot lately?” But Seungcheol takes the deck and cuts it, and Jeonghan draws three cards, spreads them in a row across the table.

One by one, Seungcheol turns the cards over. Three identical images, a lake tipped on its head, the moon gleaming round and yellow from the base of each card. _The Moon. The Moon. The Moon._

“Okay, this is just getting ridiculous,” Seungcheol says.

“I guess the cards really want to get the message across,” Jeonghan says, with the world’s weakest attempt at keeping a straight face. “Dare I say… you may be repressing something—”

“No,” Seungcheol says vehemently. “Wait—you draw one.”

“It’s not my reading, though?”

“Indulge me. Do it anyway.”

Jeonghan smiles. “Anything for you,” he says, and flips the next card over. _Judgement_. Seungcheol has the distinct feeling that someone, somewhere, is laughing at him.

“I don’t want to know,” Seungcheol says. He’ll probably succumb to curiosity and search it up when he’s awake.

“You’re going to search it up when you’re awake anyway,” Jeonghan says.

“I will not!” Seungcheol flares up. Honestly, the _nerve_. “Are you stacking this deck against me.”

“Are you questioning my magical integrity,” Jeonghan says.

“Yes!” Seungcheol says. “Obviously. What are you even asking.”

Jeonghan clicks his tongue. “Just accept that this is the hand dealt to you by fate,” he says. “Fresh off the fingers of destiny.”

“I want a do-over,” Seungcheol says.

“There’s no second chances in real life.”

“We are literally in a dream!”

“It’s important to develop good habits.”

Out of nowhere, the indignation melts away, as quickly as it had risen. “I miss you,” Seungcheol says because it’s his dream, after all, and surely he can afford some emotional honesty now, at the end of things. “When will I see you again?”

Jeonghan tilts forward, cupping Seungcheol’s face in his hands with a gentleness so studied Seungcheol finds himself tensing beneath his touch. “Hopefully,” Jeonghan says, “it won’t be for a long, long time. Hey, isn’t that Im Nayoung? Seungcheol, what _are_ you thinking about?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The tarot deck lies on the kitchen bench beside a mug filled with cut aloe leaves Junhui procured from presumably somewhere in the forest. Tentatively Seungcheol picks the cards up. They’re lighter than he expected, seventy-eight cardboard rectangles in the palm of his hand. It’s not like it matters; he doesn’t have magic anyway. He starts shuffling.

If he draws _The Lovers_ he’s going to somehow find a way to punch fate in the face for the cliche. He cuts the deck. Flips the first card over. It’s nearly as bad: _The Devil,_ reversed, something monstrous looming over the pair of lovers, the world’s least welcome voyeur. Guilt seals his throat shut. He slots the card back into the deck and sets it back on the bench.

Throughout the day he’s uncomfortably aware of distances, compulsively gauging the space between him and Joshua, or him and Junhui, or Joshua and Junhui. The last of these negligible every time he catches himself looking. Surprisingly, it’s not that hard to avoid them considering the limited enclosed space they’re all occupying, or at least to maintain a certain distance.

Once, Junhui absently laces his fingers with Joshua’s and that alone is enough to send heat flooding up Seungcheol’s neck. He gulps down water both in an effort to hide his face and to cool himself down, spluttering when it goes down the wrong pipe, and Joshua thumps his back in an attempt to help.

“I’m fine,” he manages, hoping the redness is attributable to the fact that he’s nearly just choked to death and not anything else.

Longing sets in just behind his teeth, half-healed bruise along the gums. He runs his tongue along the backs, tastes iron. _I want, I have, I wish._ Carefully he swallows each word down like pearls.

They have dinner outside, takeout containers of tteokbokki because nobody was in the mood to cook. Junhui tells them there’s a cool change coming, sweeping in wind all the way from the ocean. Already Seungcheol can feel salt in the air. “About time,” Joshua says.

The moon is a fingernail crescent in the sky black as blood. Junhui squints at it, says, “Two days till new moon,” with the conviction that comes in fits and starts, only showing its face unselfconsciously when he’s drawing on magic. Sure in his abilities the way he rarely is with anything else.

Joshua has the tarot deck in his hands—why did he bring it out to dinner? Seungcheol catches a glimpse of the topmost card as he slots it back into the deck: a corpse impaled on a row of blades. _Ten of Swords._ “Two more days,” Joshua echoes.

A flutter of black at the corner of his eye. “You guys go in first,” Seungcheol says. “I think I saw something.”

No witch would question an omen. Without waiting for a response Seungcheol turns back. A little way into the forest there’s a crow perched on a low-hanging branch. Its feathers are so dark they gleam almost blue, ice locked deep in the core of a glacier. It tips its head to the side as Seungcheol approaches, regards him with a fearless white eye.

 _What are you waiting for?_ says the crow, in Junhui’s light voice. Now, as then, Seungcheol finds himself unable to answer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first step to lucid dreaming is realising you’re in a dream. Seungcheol’s gotten pretty adept at this part thanks to a lifetime of Jeonghan barging into his dreams, basically a cheat code, since it’s not like he sees him around in real life anymore. The second step is _wanting_ to change the dream, and though it seems self-fulfilling in theory, it’s a lot more difficult in practice.

So: a dream, and for once without the hypersaturated glaze of one woven by Jeonghan, as far as Seungcheol can tell. He’s standing in an empty shopping centre he’s never seen before, the ceiling a dome of transparent faceted glass arching over a still fountain, the water in the stone basin stagnant. Rounding the corner of the fountain he sees Joshua, studying the menu for an open-air cafe, though like every other shop it’s abandoned, the umbrellas over the sitting area drawn shut.

 _What are you afraid of?_ Joshua asks, as Seungcheol comes near. His eyes glow like lit fuses.

 _The divine unknown,_ Seungcheol replies, because it seems like the right thing to say, even though he has absolutely no idea what that actually entails.

Joshua smiles like he’d been expecting that answer. _Let’s get a cake,_ he says, pointing to the menu, which swims as Seungcheol peers at it and turns into a sign reading _CAKE DESIGN UPSTAIRS!!! EAT YOUR GREATEST HOPES AND/OR FEARS AND/OR HEART!!!_ This strikes Seungcheol as so incomprehensibly beautiful he nearly tears up.

The sign says _upstairs_ but Junhui pops up behind the previously unmanned counter of the cafe and says, _Hi! Were you looking for me?_

 _Always,_ Joshua says.

Struck through with a marrow-deep and unprompted sense of foreboding, Seungcheol thinks _we are going to die._ Then he says it out loud, or maybe he said it when he thought it.

 _Don’t you ever think about love sometimes?_ Junhui sings. _I think that…_ He trails off. _Isn’t this cake so nice!_

The cake, which appeared on the counter sometime between Junhui’s arrival and now, is shaped like an elaborate gargoyle. The ambiguous feeling of doom intensifies, verging on panic. Reaching over the counter, Junhui takes Seungcheol’s face in his hands and the sensation is so real Seungcheol tries to replay it so he’ll remember when he wakes up—Junhui takes Seungcheol’s face in his hands and the sensation is so real Seungcheol tries to replay it so he’ll remember when he wakes up—Junhui takes Seungcheol’s face in his hands and says, gently, _Wake up._

Seungcheol wakes up. When the leftover dread ebbs away it takes the memory with it. Shores washing clean. In the bitter tea dark of the predawn hours there’s no witness to it but himself. Sleep eludes him until sunrise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The moon wanes to perfect nothing at precisely 1:27 p.m. today, the pronouncement coming courtesy of Junhui. All things renewing, turning themselves over, and Seungcheol doesn’t have any magical sensitivity so it’s probably a placebo effect but it’s like he can feel a strung-tight wire of skittish energy closing the noose around them.

Outside there’s a row of crows perched on the same bough, seven all in a line. “One for sorrow, two for joy,” Junhui mumbles, leaning forward against the windowsill.

“What’s seven?” Seungcheol asks.

“It’s a secret,” Joshua says.

Seungcheol scowls. “Fine, don’t tell me then.”

“Secret never to be told,” Junhui clarifies, evidently taking pity on Seungcheol. “It’s the rhyme. Seven for a secret never to be told.”

“Counting crows is pretty bullshit, it barely counts as a kind of augury,” Joshua says, but when he sets the glass in his hand down it wobbles, betraying an unsteady hand. “We should get going soon.”

The forest right at their back door has never been welcoming but it’s never felt quite this hostile, either. Joshua’s face is the colour of old parchment as he stares into the indistinct gloom.

Seungcheol chews at his lip. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Joshua croaks out.

“That first night,” Seungcheol says. “What was the card you drew? The one you picked up and put back down, what was it?”

It’s Junhui who answers. “ _The Tower,_ ” he says. He’s looking at Joshua, brow creased in concern.

“It doesn’t matter,” Joshua says. “Let’s go.”

Joshua starts walking. Junhui kicks half-heartedly at some strips of bark lying on the ground nearby and follows, and after a moment Seungcheol does too. The foliage closing over their heads is dense enough to keep the path in perpetual twilight.

The further they move into the forest the more Joshua’s condition seems to deteriorate. He comes to an abrupt stop, bracing himself against a tree, forehead gleaming with perspiration, and Junhui ducks in to loop an arm around his waist, murmuring something in his ear. Seungcheol doesn’t hear what he says but the moment seems so private he has to look away.

They keep going. There’s no sound but the crunch of leaf litter underfoot and Joshua’s increasingly laboured breathing, not even the lilting back-and-forth of birds calling to one another, or the hum of insects. Forests shouldn’t be this silent. The air is cool and damp but that isn’t what drives the shiver down Seungcheol’s back.

“He’s burning up,” Junhui mutters.

“I’m fine,” Joshua grits out. He’s ashy pale, listing on his feet despite Junhui’s supportive arm.

Curls of smoke have started wisping off his skin. “Joshua,” Seungcheol says, low.

“I’m fine,” Joshua says, again, more forcefully. “I’m fine, just—keep going. We’re nearly there.”

They are not, as far as Seungcheol can tell, nearly _anywhere._ They’d left the path what feels like years ago and each slim-trunked tree they pass looks identical to the last, no way to tell what direction they’re heading in, if they’re making any progress at all. But he grits his teeth and nods and doesn’t meet Junhui’s worried gaze searing the side of his face.

And then out of nowhere the trees disappear into a perfectly circular clearing. Joshua is so pale he seems insubstantial, a trick of the light, an echo of an echo, like the wind could ripple right through him. He shakes Junhui off, stumbles into the middle of the clearing. Seungcheol glances down. Junhui's fingers are red, almost blistered where they’d come into contact with Joshua’s bare skin.

Asking if this is the ley artery seems like stating the obvious so Seungcheol saves his breath. Joshua pivots around to face them and Seungcheol bites back a curse because his eyes are ovals of smooth, blank white, no trace of pupil or iris, only light blazing out of the hollow sockets. When he opens his mouth silver liquid beads up at the side of his lips, at the base of his nose. He says a word that isn’t a word at all, one that looks rather than sounds like the downwards stroke of an executioner’s blade and the world goes terrifyingly taut and white around the edges. Without realising it Seungcheol’s on the ground, braced on a knee, hands clapped over his ears.

When he looks up Junhui is saying something he can’t hear, waving his hands wildly until Seungcheol cottons on and pushes himself back onto his feet, unsteady. Filigree of gold threads glimmering in a mesh around the perimeter of the clearing with the substantiality of raindrops, and Seungcheol blinks but the vision doesn’t clear. His eyes trace the solder lines of gold all the way back to their source: Joshua. Gold pouring out of his fingers, hemming them in. With a start Seungcheol recognises the pattern—it’s a ward, identical to the spidery circular diagrams he’d seen Jihoon tracing over and over again in his grimoires back in high school, and the fact that he can _see_ it means—

He glances down. There’s gold sparking at his fingertips and two decades’ worth of delayed relief batters at the back of his mind but there’s no time for it. Somehow he knows what to do. Reaches down into the pit of himself and pulls and everything comes unstoppered.

The magic resonates something subatomic, deeper than instinct, spilling over out of him in waves towards Junhui first and then like a downhill channel towards Joshua. Like calling to like, all that power coming home and Joshua like a lightning rod shoves it down, down into the tangled ley lines. With the unwilling creak of an ancient waterwheel coming to life the lines snap apart, something indescribable settling into place. Then the response, action, reaction: power surges up again, through the ground, into Joshua.

For a single brimming moment it’s as if Joshua is holding all the light in the universe inside him, so much it lifts him off the ground entirely. And it explodes out of him in every direction, waterfalling down. He crumples to the ground like his strings have been snapped. Junhui darts down to catch him.

In the very heart of the clearing Seungcheol feels the earth shift as if it’s under his own skin. And then a spring bursts forth. Water gushing out from the newly gentled ground.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pause, rewind, play. “Junnie,” Seungcheol says. “Can you hold the wards?” Junhui nods, gold light gathering at his fingertips. “Okay, give me a second,” and then Seungcheol, operating on sheer blind instinct, does possibly the most stupid thing he’d ever done and tips forward into his own shadow, tearing through the barriers between the conscious and unconscious, searching for the familiar sharpness of that in-between place Jeonghan’s brought him to so many times. He’s never thought to go there himself, that dream within a dream, but why should Jeonghan be the only person able to access it? It’s his dream, too, in the end.

When he reaches it, Jeonghan is waiting for him. Of course it’s Jeonghan. Without a host dreamer the place is formless, grey and light and distinct only as far as Seungcheol can perceive, petering out into unsettling nothingness right at the edges of his peripheral vision. He curls his hands into fists and strides forward.

“You know why I’m here,” Seungcheol calls.

“I do,” Jeonghan says. “It isn’t that easy, you know. You can’t just waltz into Death and take whoever you want back with you.”

“I know,” Seungcheol says. “But I’m trying anyway. Did you—did you know? That this was going to happen?”

“We don’t interfere,” Jeonghan says gently, and that in itself is enough of an answer. “It was his choice. That’s important, you know. The fact that he chose it, of his own free will. Choice always matters.”

“I know,” Seungcheol repeats, and his voice cracks on the last syllable, but Jeonghan only looks at him, eyes clear and dark and waiting. “It’s just—he shouldn’t have needed to make it.”

“Magic demands balance,” Jeonghan says. “So what are you willing to give up?”

That’s the opening he’d been hoping for. Seungcheol meets Jeonghan’s gaze squarely, braces himself against the embarrassment already heating up the back of his neck, and says, “Anything.”

For a while Jeonghan’s expression is indecipherable; strange, to be unable to read someone he’s known his entire life. And then he smiles. “I’ll pay this time,” he says. “When we see each other again you better treat me to something nice.”

It takes a moment for Seungcheol to recognise the violent upswell of feeling in his chest as relief, like his heart has sheared itself free from its tethers so viciously it could crawl back up his throat. “Anything you want,” Seungcheol agrees. “I’ll buy you the whole menu.”

Jeonghan holds up a cautioning finger. “Don’t get used to it,” he says. “Death isn’t supposed to play favourites, you know. But since it’s you, and it’s him, and it’s also poor Junnie out there standing guard over both your bodies, so—just this once, Choi Seungcheol.”

He uncurls his hand, and a gossamer thread unspools from his fingers, floats through the air towards Seungcheol in a flutter of papery wings, growing brighter and brighter and by the time it lands in the cradle of Seungcheol’s palms Joshua’s soul is a blaze of silvery white.  

“Thank you,” Seungcheol says. Joshua’s soul flares, as though expressing its own gratitude.

For once, Jeonghan’s gaze is completely without artifice. “Give Junnie my love,” he sings, and then the world whites out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The moment Seungcheol jerks upright a warm tangle of limbs barrels into his chest, and he reciprocates on instinct, blinks until his vision resolves into a faceful of Junhui’s hair.

“I thought I lost both of you,” Junhui says, muffled, in the approximate vicinity of Seungcheol’s shoulder. “Don’t you ever— _ever—_ do that to me again—”

“I won’t,” Seungcheol says, with all the honesty he can manage. “Wen Junhui, I won’t go anywhere you can’t follow ever again, I promise.”

A flattened groan uncurls from Joshua’s body and, exchanging a wide-eyed glance, both Seungcheol and Junhui scramble towards him.

“Hi,” Joshua says, voice raspy. He blinks contemplatively. Clears his throat. “I’m not dead anymore.”

“Yeah,” Seungcheol breathes. He realises he’s hover-handing, and tucks his hands into his pockets, hopefully before anyone else notices. “I made a deal.”

“With Death?”

“With Jeonghan,” Seungcheol corrects, though really it’s just semantics.

Joshua cracks a smile. “Damn, what’d you have to give him in return? Your future firstborn? Your soul? Your next life?”

“Hey, I’m not _that_ bad at bargaining—” Joshua, delicately, raises an eyebrow. “I mean it! Jeonghan said he’d pay this time. But I might also have to buy out a restaurant?”

“How do you feel?” Junhui interrupts, grabbing Joshua’s hand before wincing; he must have forgotten the blisters.

“Careful,” Seungcheol murmurs. Joshua repurposes the grip to take hold of Junhui’s wrist, flip his hand over.

“Was that me?” Joshua asks, inspecting the broken skin. “I’m sorry, Junnie.”

Junhui drops his gaze. He nods, then hurries to add, “But it’s fine! I knew it would happen but I did it anyway. I held on to you when you were burning up because I wanted to.”

What they did to the ley line was nameless, no spell or ritual to bind the magic in place. Later Joshua will say, thoughtfully, _I guess it was kind of like… overloading a circuit on purpose, and then I just absorbed the excess, like earthing a power surge or something,_ and Seungcheol will say, _Really?!_ and Joshua will say, _Nah, I made that up on the spot but I’m glad it sounded legit._ But at the time there’d only been that seemingly infinite energy welling up relentless and demanding to be poured out into the world. Path of least resistance.

He’s never commanded magic before but he’d known it, known the exact tenor of Joshua’s and Junhui’s as if from a past life, or a dream. Secret never to be told, but Seungcheol opens his mouth and speaks it into being.

“Are we a—coven?” Seungcheol blurts out. “Is that—is that what we are, now?”

Joshua’s drawing water from the spring up to Junhui’s injured hands, coaxing the skin whole again. He regards Seungcheol with that vaguely condescending expression of barely concealed mirth that Seungcheol has come to realise he’s unfortunately a sucker for.

“Well,” Joshua says, dragging the syllable out. “That depends. Is that all you want?”

It takes Seungcheol a moment to parse through the layers of meaning to the words. He blinks three times in rapid succession. Surreptitiously he digs his nails into his palm, but despite the short flare of pain Joshua’s face doesn’t change. Bewildered, he glances at Junhui, who gazes back at him, open, expectant. “But I thought—you and Jun,” Seungcheol mumbles. “That’s why I didn’t…”

Junhui laughs, a bright, shocked sound. “You know,” he says. His smile almost disbelieving. “All we ever talked about was you, anyway.”

“You guys were so damn loud,” Seungcheol says. “I kept— _hearing_ —”

“Oh, that? We wanted you to hear us,” Joshua says, casual. Seungcheol feels his face turn scarlet. “We were waiting for you.”

“For you to realise what you want,” Junhui corrects. Always the one who knows, never the one who acts first, but then he adds, “Do you know what that is yet?”

What is he waiting for? He’s wide awake. There are no crows in sight.

“Yeah,” Seungcheol says. “Yeah, I do.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> > ten of swords: hitting rock bottom, painful endings, catharsis  
> > judgement: judgement, rebirth, final step of the journey  
> > the lovers: relationships, duality, choices  
> > the devil: dark side, powerlessness, material desires  
> > the tower: sudden disaster, upheaval, revelation
> 
> fun fact all the dreams in this fic are based on dreams i've actually had in real life... also the piano piece jun plays is debussy's la cathédrale engloutie, which is at the end of the playlist linked up top!
> 
> you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/juncheolsoo) or [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/inheritance) ♡


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